Does Your Mother Know? (5 page)

“Good grief, you’re not talking about one of the princes are you? The secret is safe with me, I’m just a colonial.”

He grinned. “Och, you’re the worst.”

For a moment, I burned with curiosity, but felt badly about it. Poor laddie, indeed, never to be free from that kind of relentless attention.

A female constable came in carrying a wire basket.

“Thanks, Rosie,” said Gillies, and he took it from her and placed it on the front table.

She gave me a quick, curious glance tinged with sympathy and left.

A new-looking, red-leather overnight suitcase and a brown purse were in the basket.

“It’s all yours,” said Gillies.

I took out the purse. As Harris had said, there wasn’t much in it. A passport, a leather credit-card case that contained a Visa card, social security and health cards, and a driver’s licence. All the essential documents of contemporary life. I opened the passport. The expiry date was a year from now, which meant the photograph had been taken about four years ago. Joan had the typical stunned expression that passport photos seem to necessitate. Her hair was dyed dark, well-cut as befitted a hairstylist. Her chin was full, her lips on the thin side. She looked older than she was.

I unzipped the suitcase next. “I’ll take out each item and put it on the table.”

I was taking refuge in the old routines.

“One nightdress, red silk with lace trim at the neck, size medium, label HOLT RENFREW.” I spoke out loud. “That’s an upscale department store in Toronto. Next item. A matching dressing gown, same label, same size. Two pairs of underwear, white, medium, both new, also silk. A short-sleeved, crew-necked sweater, yellow cashmere, size medium. The label on that is LEONE’S.”

I must say I was surprised. Not at the new clothes, I’d bought new undies for my own trip. (Who wants a customs official searching through shabby panties?) What surprised me was the quality of the clothes. Silk and cashmere? Wow. Joan had never been fussy about what she wore. She regularly shopped at places like Second Time Around or Goodwill. She must have come into some money, or maxed out her credit card. Besides, she swore she
liked
synthetics. Easier to care for.

I continued with the rest of the contents.

“A bag of toiletries, blue toothbrush, toothpaste brand Crest, deodorant brand Lady Eve, a tube of Nivea face cream, a package of DuMaurier cigarettes, unopened.”

“Is she a smoker?” Gillies asked.

“Supposedly not. She stopped a couple of years ago.”

“Was that her brand?”

“Yes.”

I turned back to the suitcase. “Last item. A package of Ramses condoms. That’s it.”

“Do you think it is your mother’s suitcase?”

I was sharp with him because I was embarrassed.

“If you mean would she be carrying condoms, why not? She’s just turned sixty. Why shouldn’t she be sexually active if she wants to be?”

“Sorry. I wasn’t being some sexist clod, I was just wondering if these belongings are consistent with her lifestyle.”

“The cigarettes and condoms are, the fancy clothes aren’t.”

I could tell he wanted me to expound on that, but I didn’t. Nothing against him, it was far too long and complicated a story to go into at the moment.

I fished inside the inner soft pocket of the case. There was something there. I took out a small photo album. I’d never seen it before, but in the window on the cover was a photograph of me taken at my graduation from the police academy. I had no idea Joan possessed such a thing. I opened the album and started to flip the pages. All were photographs of me from infancy to about my early teens, when she seemed to have stopped documenting my development. Underneath each picture was a note of my age when it was taken. There was a picture of her holding me in her arms when I was six months old. I was truly surprised at how young and pretty she was. And that she looked proud and happy.

I handed the album over to Gillies, who went through it carefully, pausing at this photograph of the two of us.

“You take after your mother.”

“Same colouring, but I’m taller.”

“An attractive picture if I may say so,” he said, indicating the police graduation photo.

“Thank you. Our hats aren’t as smart as the Brits’, but they’re better than they used to be.”

He replaced the album in the basket. “Any conclusions?”

“You tell me. I’m far too subjective on the question of my mother’s behaviour. As a police officer, what do you think?”

He tapped the suitcase lightly to emphasize his words. “New case, new fancy clothes, prophylactics. I’d think she was planning a lovers’ tryst, except you said she didn’t know anybody here.”

“She never mentioned she did, but you have to understand, she never confided in me nor I in her. I haven’t actually seen her in person for two years. We spoke on the phone a month ago, that’s all.”

“And she never said anything about a trip, or a new boyfriend?”

“Nothing. Hey, maybe she was just hoping. Be prepared for anything. Always take your shopping bag, like the Soviets did when they went out in the morning. You never know when there’s going to be a run of carrots in the shops. Mrs. Waring, the B & B lady, said Joan had planned to return the next day.”

“It could be just what you said then: being prepared.”

He glanced away. I knew what he was thinking. Casual sex is the norm these days, but surely a woman of sixty wasn’t going to jump into bed with a stranger. But I thought, why should she change her habits now?

“She’s gone to some trouble to show you off. There aren’t any other pictures in the album.”

I was mystified at that. If you didn’t know, you’d think this was a proud mother.

“Would it be possible for me to take a look at the scene of the accident?”

“It would. Of course. We can go now.”

“No Royals to attend to?”

“Not at the moment. Let’s repack this and I’ll put it in the evidence locker.”

I did so, and closed up the case.

“Be right back,” he said as he left me. I was glad to have a few moments to myself. I knew I’d come across as Miss Calm and Professional, but that’s not what I felt inside.

I sat down in one of the chairs and stared at the blank chalk-board.
I have to exorcise some ghosts. A path of healing,
she’d called it. It was true what Gillies had observed. Joan had taken care with the album. People did carry around photographs of their children. Of course they did. I had two or three pictures in my wallet of me and
the Jackson family and Paula’s youngest, Chelsea — my godchild — but I didn’t carry an album like that with careful notations.

I should explain something. Until I was well into my twenties, I had what you might call a father complex. I walked around with yearnings in my chest that were so constant, it was like living with shortness of breath. I got huge crushes on older male teachers and kind neighbours. I adored Paula’s father from the get-go. Fortunately, maturity cooled down both that yearning and my curiosity about the past. Joan made it clear she wasn’t going to tell me who my father really was. She slipped up on the name a couple of times, when she was plastered. At first he was John, then Paul, but when she called him George, I realized that she’d been inspired by the Beatles, and I stopped asking before going through the trauma of hearing I had a father named Ringo. Finally, I concluded that all of it was lies and she didn’t even know who had been the sperm donor. My conception had been the result of some meaningless coupling.

Or had it? To tell the truth, I never totally gave up wondering, watching her for some clue that she might let slip. Who did she want to show me off to? Were the photographs intended for
him
, the man who had fathered me? Not a dead hero, but a live man. If this was the case, given her behaviour so far, it was possible this man lived here and she’d come to meet him.

Looking at that possibility was rather like staring down a well. I couldn’t see the bottom but I could hear the bucket being winched up and I had no idea what it was going to contain.

Gillies came back into the room.

“All right?” he asked.

“Let’s go,” I said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I was automatically walking to the right side of the car before I realized my error and headed for the left. The Scots followed the perverse English way of driving, and the steering wheel was on that side, passenger seat on the left.

“Allow me,” said Gillies and he opened the car door for me. I clambered in rather awkwardly. The car seemed like a toy to me.

“How did you come by your black eye?” I asked him as we drove off.

He laughed. “Playing shinty.” Glancing over at me, he grinned again. “It’s not what you think. Shinty is one of the island’s favourite sports. Sort of a mixture of field hockey and lacrosse. I got caught with my opponent’s stick.” Gingerly, he touched his cheekbone. “At least I got a penalty shot out of it.”

“Did you win the game?”

“No.”

He moved out to pass a slow car in front of us, and involuntarily I flinched as we seemed to come too close.

“This driving on the left takes some getting used to.”

We were soon out of the town and on a two-lane road that wound across what he told me was Barvas Moor. Houses became few and far between. I put down the window and stuck my face into the rushing air.

“Oh, what is that wonderful tangy smell?”

“I don’t know what you’re smelling. You never know with visitors. It could be sheep; the sea; the peat.”

“Hey, I know sea and I doubt sheep smell this good. This is sort of smoky.”

“Then it’s the peat. It’s still used for fuel by the crofters. It was an old tradition for the villagers to band together to ‘bring in the peat’ as they called it. You’ll see the stacks near the cottages.”

“Did you do that?”

He shook his head. “I’m an incomer. I grew up in the big city of Inverness. I married a girl from Stornoway and came to live here twenty odd years ago.” He paused a beat. “We’ve been separated four years now, but I saw no reason to move away. One of my daughters lives down in Barras.”

I can read subtext as well as the next bacherlorette. I replied in kind.

“I’ve never been married myself, and I’ve never put myself in the way of maternity.”

He didn’t get the joke, so I assumed he hadn’t seen the show,
Mamma Mia.
“I suppose the major relationship in my life these days is with my job.”

“I know how that can happen,” he said, a little grimly, I thought. “Jock said you were, quote, a ‘criminal investigative analyst.’”

“I’ve only just started that. I was a regular generic detective until recently.”

“Thought you’d like a change, did you?”

“Something like that.”

Detective Sergeant Morris is completely exonerated of using excessive force in this unfortunate tragedy. “You killed my sister, you racist pig. I spit on you.” And she did, right across my mouth.

Gillies was saying something.

“Needless to say, we no have any such thing as profilers here in Lewis, we’re a mite short on serial killers, but from what I’ve heard, it’s interesting work.”

“I’m hoping that. When I was with the violent-crime squad, which is where you have to start, I might be stuck on the same case
dragging on for two or even three years. With this work, so I’m told, there’s nothing if not variety. Just when you think nobody can come up with any new way to kill themselves or somebody else, they do.”

He grimaced. “Nothing like that happens here, thank God. Even with the summer tourist population, Stornoway is a small place. I know most of the people who live here, who’s had a brush with the law, who’s into drugs, teenagers mostly. We get virtually no violent crimes if you discount the occasional drunken brawl on the docks. Russian sailors usually with too much vodka in them. The perpetrators are usually lying right beside their victims. I don’t get much chance to play Sherlock Holmes, and frankly I’m happy to keep it like that.”

He didn’t say it in any smug way, just matter of fact. The difference between small town and megacity.

“At least you get the satisfaction of seeing a case through to its conclusion. The downside of my job is I won’t own a case any more. We’re consultants. The local investigators still have to do the leg work, and the detectives aren’t obliged to tell us what happened. Most of them do so out of courtesy, but they don’t have to.”

Neither of us asked why we’d gone into police work in the first place. Officers rarely talked about it seriously. But then neither do brain surgeons. “
By the way, Doctor Medley-Brown, why did you decide to make a career of slicing through bone and flesh?”
As for gynecologists, I don’t want to go there.

As well as what I’ve already said about chaos and order, which was a private reason, I’d joined the police force because Paula’s father was a cop and she wanted to be one too. We went to the academy at the same time. Until a few months ago, I’d had no regrets.

Sunrise DeLuca had been lying in her crib for two days. The room was freezing, because the windows were wide open and it was January. She was emaciated, wearing only a filthy diaper. She was blue with cold and exhaustion and so weak that I didn’t know initially if she was alive or not. Her mother, Sondra, with an O, age about nineteen, was a crack addict and part-time prostitute, and had supposedly left her child with the next-door neighbour, another crack addict, who denied he knew anything about this assumed responsibility. They had both been there when I arrived on the scene, and it was he who said I had handled Sondra so roughly that she had a heart attack and died. The coroner said it was the crack that killed her. The DeLuca family, one sister and a demented mother, said I did it because I hated Native people.

I turned my attention to the scenery. The cloud-filled sky seemed vast, and the moor rolled away to gathering hills on my left and slate-grey strips of ocean on my right. The low-growing brush was a sombre taupe colour, with here and there slashes of coal-black soil where the peat had been cut out. Pockets of white wildflowers reminded me of snow patches, but the only flash of colour was the yellow of the wild gorse bushes that were scattered along the edge of the road.